In class we read the American classic “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” by Mark Twain. Since this book was based in a different time period then where we are today, there were many different things going on in America. There was slavery and just very different views from what most of us believe today. “This is the story of America. Everybody is doing what they think they’re supposed to.” - Jack Kerouac. This position statement fits well with this book because everyone in the book thinks they are supposed to be following rules or respectable actions, but is it really what they should do?
On Chapter 11 Huck dresses as a girl to go into town and find out stuff about what has been going on recently since him and Jim have been away. He meets a woman and she soon catches on that he is indeed not a girl but a boy. “ And when you throw a rat or anything hitch yourself up a tip-toe and fetch your hand up over your head as awkward as you can, and miss your rat, throw stiff armed-Like a girl” (58 Twain). Back then everybody thought that being a girl or doing something like a girl was a bad thing, this comment she made was sexist towards women, and its strange because she is one herself. On chapter 18 Huck is currently in the house with a family he meets, but ends up leaving after he finds out the cons of staying with this… peculiar family. “ A feud is this way. A man has a quarrel with another man, and kills him; then that other man’s brother kills him; then the other brothers, on the both sides, goes for one another, then the cousins chip in-and by-and-by everybody’s killed off, and there ain't no more feud. But it’s kind of slow, and take a long time” (100 Twain). This family thinks they are supposed to be murdering each other over something that nobody remembers anymore. thats the story of this family basically which reflects off of America because a lot of family’s have something like this with other families but maybe not as extreme. On chapter 34 Huck’s friend Tom agrees to help free the runaway slave Jim. “Here was a boy that was respectable, and well brung up; and had a character to lose; and folks at home that had characters; and he was bright and not leather-headed; and knowing and not ignorant; and not mean, but kind; and yet here he was, without any more pride, or rightness, or feeling, than to stoop to this business, and make himself a shame, and his family a shame, before everybody” (212 Twain). During this time period everybody thought slavery was really the right thing to do, so for Tom from white respectable rich parents it was nice of him to give that up to help JIM, its what he thought was right, and a long with Huck, he feels like he is supposed to turn him in a couple times during the book, but never does because deep down he knows he shouldn't. Time and trends change over time. The more years to come will never change that perspective. A constant cycle here in America of following a set of unwritten rules we all make and think we are supposed to follow for ever, then next thing you know it changes to the next set of rules and so forth till the world ends. What should we really be doing here in America? Till we find out we keep doing what we think is right for this country. |